Investigating the English Teachers, Up to 8th Grade
Seeking Dreams and Passions through Literature and Language, and the People who Take the Charge of Conveying them to Us (begun Spring 2016?)
Over the course of a lifetime we accrue many English teachers, yes? We Americans, we native English speakers of this now universal yet quaintly local tongue that originates from the northwestern European islands. The mother language of the English descending from Anglo-Saxons originating a bit over a thousand years ago: the poetic syntax, song and cadence of it; an amalgam of Latin and Germanic, and a thousand other rare sounds and sights and ideas. Like other tongues spoken, but unique in its presence and function in today's 21st century. It is spoken throughout the globe, even in lands where they speak other native languages like Chinese, Spanish, Arabic, or French.
And for this purpose, to be conversant and more in this language, among many functions, we have those English teachers. To shape and craft us, guide us and lead us, to take us to imaginative forays and places mentally and socially, to help us communicate and express, explain and convince, persuade ourselves and others, in logic and thought. Thousands and millions and thoughts and feelings to channel...
Seeking our dreams and passions through literature and language, oral and silent, which tell myriad stories of our souls. The stories and writings channel who we are and who we want to be. Our English teachers lead us to ourselves.
Sometimes. They lead us somewhere, anyway, in classes if not imagination and school, at least in chronological time periods. September. Fall Semester. Winter break, Friday morning...
As US citizens there had to be one teacher per year, in most cases, at least as the majority of us attend public schools. For me it started in the 1970s, formally at Elm Heights, a two story brick elementary school close to the Indiana University campus in Bloomington. A mid-American college town.
Mrs. Williams (student teacher Miss Howard/Turner) 1976-1977
Mrs. Koryta 1977-1978
Mrs. Wade 1978-1979
Mrs. Swinford 1979-1980
Mrs. Key 1980-81
Mrs. Daniels 1981-1982
Mrs. Albright 1982-1983
Mrs. Sperry 1983-1984
Mrs. Findley 1984-1985
Mrs. Horning 1985-1986
Mrs. Morrow 1986-1987 Arts and Humanities Mrs. Nowling 1986--Greeks and Latin Derivatives
Mrs. Granich 1987-1988
Mrs. Clapacs 1988-1989 ---the IU admin's wife...
Mrs. College Summer 1992 Re-do Writing 101
Mrs. College Summer 1994 Advanced Writing 301
Sometimes we have more than one academic year with one English teacher, if it works out that way. My daughter has had this occur in her two years of high school. English teachers instruct uS about literal language, the language of our birth. Usually they help re-craft the language that our parents and siblings have been hurling at us for years. They teach us understanding and style, choice and taste. They take our papers and mark them, comment on them, place stickers on them. They introduce us to authors and writers that perhaps we should be aware of; so that we can be considered literate.
Literacy, and art. There is the pragmatic of literacy and there is the art above it.
There are language teachers... Who in many ways can expand our native language and understanding. I've had a few of those.
Mrs. Koryta was a nice first year teacher for me; her first year ever as a parabulist. I did not know much about spelling or writing on paper, but we made sentences together. Nothing too fancy. But she was a patient and enthusiastic teacher, the right person for me. She made learning how to spell and read fun, non-threatening, rewarding.
Putting together words to make up sentences. Sentences that create stories and arguments, histories and documentations. We learn how to confirm what we may really think. This is growing up.
Mrs. Wade in second grade encouraged us to sharpen our spelling, expand our ever growing vocabulary, and
even to
write stories! Stories! What were better than those? It was that year at that precocious age I was resolved and determined that I would write a compelling story. I tried to doao with my big pencils and big print pages of dotted lines.
In those days I would listen to albums and cassette tapes at my home: some were short stories about myths and fables, some mysteries and spooky stories from Alfred Hitchcock, some about Sinbad or the Red Baron, and there was this one about a magic tailor... That one caught my fancy, captured my imagination, compelled me to write such a story. And somehow make it be mine.
I tried back then, in my limited second grade prose. I aspired to be that fabulist, that raconteur. I was not able to finish it, despite composing 3 or 5 or 8 pages... the ideas were not totally mine, in any event, but the
idea was mine to write a long story. Thus was one dream of literature in the 1970s.
Third grade brought Mrs. Swinford, who introduced more adult and scientific words to our malleable minds. She was very keen to the language of photosynthesis; us little 8-9 and year-olds had a hard time understanding both why she wanted us to transcribe her fanatical high handed technical tracts as well as the actual language and concepts of the photosynthetic process. I suppose it helped some of us.
In 4th grade Mrs. Key opened my mind up to the greater world: places like Iran, and Egypt and Israel in the present day beyond the Bible. Little black and white news films strips became a real part of my concepts of the world, inspiring more narratives, especially of the international, the greater world, yea, the expanding universe.
Mrs. Daniels had a special penchant for literature and inspiration in the arts of prose; she was probably the right touch for me before leaving elementary school. She had developed us as fourth and fifth graders by helping us print and "publish" our books! (She worked with us in Mrs. Keys class, knowing that she would inherit us the following year.) I still have my two self-made books that I wrote and animated thanks to her; they both have to do with bunnies and travails that befall them. If I were never to write or produce any more literature since the 5th grade in 1981, at least I had written "The Easter Tale" and the "The Purple Hare".
She read to us out loud as we sat at our desks and doodled; including a very well crafted book about a country boy and his Irish Setter,
Big Red. As a father, decades later, I read this book to my children; I find that it is impressive as good prose. Very literate, well narrated, great vocabulary. It teaches lessons about real life like loyalty, trust, bravery, goodness, and plain out-door smarts and common sense. Mrs. Daniels was older, near retirement; she would get so emotional near the end of the book that for one chapter she would leave the class while a good reader would finish the climax where the main characters fought their nemesis, tooth and nail.
I am sure that the sheer impact of a book,
this book, the down home yet sophisticated prose of this story about a boy and a dog in the Appalachian mountains, with this effect upon a woman of experience and intelligence (Mrs. Daniels was an air traffic controller during World War II among other things), left a lasting and perhaps deep subliminal mark on me. The power of fiction and any narrative may evoke real reactions, emotions, consequences. This book and its story had power and beauty.
Writers and their works had power, had eloquence, had beauty, had a sweet effect. Check.
Sixth grade and middle school introduced a new panoply of English learning. Not only was it the language and styles of the actual English teachers and the books and readings and writings that they introduced in the formal classes, but it was the rest of the staff of this bigger environment of education: social studies, science, math, gym, band, wood shop, mechanical drawing, cooking. Plus there were all the new students from other schools with new ways of talking and communicating our group lexicon; the new administration and faculty, the very music from the juke-box in the lunch room cafeteria: all of it added to our language, our collective and sub-conscious English.
Mrs. Albright was not only my regular English teacher that first year, but I had her for PLASC Lab, another of my seven (or six?) daily classes. This was an additional English class to allow us to sharpen our grammar skills and reading. This was a daily class, like the rest, where we were supposed to work on grammar books for four days and then read books of our choice on the fifth day, I suppose as a reward for all the week's work.
At some point that fall of 1982, as a sixth grader with more private time and autonomy than I had ever had in the public school system (except in third grade when I stayed in during recess for a month after a bout with mononucleuosis, reading many books) I found myself so engrossed and enthralled with this obligatory but limited "reading time", apart from everyone else, that I forgot about the grammar work books assigned Monday through Thursday. I dove into the pure joy of literary exploration and I did pure reading of books, including the first 90 or so pages of War and Peace. After all, it was an option in our selection (credit the person who placed it there). I was enjoying the story, thrilled by the fact that I could understand such a novel that was respected on so many levels. However, Mrs. Albright found out, discovered that I was not doing the daily work, and had me stop reading it!
What? I suppose for the fact that I had already fallen behind in my workbook tasks and had taken advantage of reading other entire books on those allotted week day hours instead of completing grammar lessons, like reading a history book called "Black American Heroes of the Revolutionary War", and a teenage book about a kid with a magical green bike, and possibly a few others, had led her to believe that I was to be corrected. I obeyed her mandate; I stopped reading War and Peace; I have attempted to go back to it decades later, but I have not accomplished the reading since.
I did have my daughter read it as sixth grader because I was away and I exacted a type of revenge, redemption, or justice on that travesty of my history as a reader and English student. I am glad my daughter did this. I need to talk to her more about what that book means. She tells me the main protagonist is Pierre... (side note for further discussion).
Seventh grade brought on the world of Mrs. Sperry in two doses: the first was the high-minded and well mannered Mrs. Sperry. I had this version of her for my first semester in the fall and winter of 1983, a time of change for me and my family since my parents were going through marital and family adjustments. The next stages of separation and divorce began the year before.
It was a fall where I fell short of my goal of joining the middle school football team, as I had been fancying for a few years; maybe I then (at least sub-consciously) saw myself as more of an English student because of it, maybe words on pages and stories took greater meaning to me since I could not manifest as much of my hopes and energies on the field of play, as I had dreamt of doing awake and asleep since the fourth grade. Perhaps I became more of a voyeur of the sport then and ever since, forever gaping at the waves and tumults of the seas that I could not venture upon as an intrepid sailor or captain of my own vessel. But-- watching the sea tides and swells brought a sense of joy nevertheless. Following and processing these competitions was an ethereal desire that I would chase over horizons, a phantom of inexplicable mystery that is there in front of you but can never be obtained. But the chase, the journey, is compelling. Albeit vicarious.
Like Melville's Ahab and that fantastically terrifying yet enervating white whale, a something we cannot quite understand nor obtain. We all have muses and monsters that haunt and elate us. Playing a sport, observing a sport, describing and narrating that sport, this passion play in an open venue across the ubiquitous air and sound waves, it becomes the elusive shark that the Old Man and the Sea endeavors to return back to shore, the trip of Ulysses, Odysseus, the voyage that never truly ends.
It is life.
A lot like life. Stories to live and tell. Reading, tracking, listening to stories unfold across the multi-media.
Seventh grade and no football for me. My cleats and mouth guard abandoned to some forgotten locker. But other worlds awaited on Friday nights. Mrs. Sperry was wealthy; did not need to work; fellow students mentioned that she never wore the same pair of shoes twice; I as a young son of an electrician and a copy shop manager did not care very much about her economic status. She was prim and proper, strict but fair, courteous and authoritative as woman of some 55 or more years. Stately, older, but still a person of youthful vigor when it came to style and presentation. She had a certain demeanor with us of the English Honors class, to the audience of children of college professors and successfully self-made Americans. I would then come to learn, the hard way, that this comportment would change for others not of our privileged ilk.
Midway through the academic year in early 1984 I was forced to switch down to the regular level English class with some of the lesser regarded students of Binford Middle School. I left the Honors class but retained Mrs. Sperry. I was rather taken aback, shocked at her changed disposition towards my new class of under-achievers. She was aggressive, mean, I guess you might call it more condescending. I believe that she was embarrassed by this fact since I had seen the "higher" side of her the previous semester. But, it is hard to play so many roles within roles while carrying out a daily job with so many children of formative impressions; she knew what worked per class and audience. Lessons learned about attitudes and professional workmanship.
1984: a year of some literary renown. Gratefully, Mr. Courtney, a man who cared to explain the ideas and subject matter of George Orwell, was my teacher in social studies for the second year in a row; his influence on my ideas and knowledge, literature, and world events and history carried the greater weight as to my general outlook and inspirations. George Orwell, indeed.
I finished the year in this spring"bone-head" English, as we, my fellow 7th grade buddies called the lower level class, as we knew it to be deficient of our higher capabilities and intellects. Most of my friends were always placed in the highest level courses, be it math or English or anything else. By then I definitely considered myself a good reader and strong with the language, and academics and thinking in general: it was a point of pride, enough so that I gave up my band career (I played the clarinet) since my music period interfered with "English literature and good books", the language of my interests.
Books and reading had become a large part of my raison de etre, a large part of how I thought of myself. A reader. A thinker. An absorber, a type of sponge, like so many of us, of information and stories. I had the internal dialogue that based on losing the Honors status and treatment that " I didn't want to let playing an instrument get in the way of my English career." I really thought that way, and told a few people, including my band teacher who tried to implore me to continue in the musical arts. "Never again," I swore, "would an instrument retard my language talents." A conscious decision to stick to books, to reading, to writing, to crafting an art of then and now. And the future.
My family was going through some turbulent times as the divorce went forward and became legal as I was an eighth grader. Mrs. Findley was my 8th grade English teacher at the new Batchelor Middle School, located in the country where we were bused, with new kids, mostly country folk. It was different and not the best, but not the worst. I knew about this personal background of Mrs. Findley, who used to be Mrs. Mull, but ended up leaving her former husband and marrying Mr. Findley, who happened to be the father of one of my sister's best friends. It was awkward, and things did not seem as they should. So, two of my sister's closest friends became step-sisters, and the whole drama seemed a little Shakespearean or something more sordid. This was one strike against her, sad to say. But I think I gave her the benefit of the doubt, beyond this question of character. But impressions come in sundry ways, as follows.
She was a decent English teacher; after reading Jack London's "Call of the Wild" and being inspired to buy a large anthology of his at a university bookstore and proudly showing it to her in between classes one day, her rather less than enthusiastic response made me wonder if she really cared about writing, books, or even me as student of prose and the written word. Curious. Perhaps aspects of this author was a turn off for her personally. He was labeled, after all, as a Communist and misogynist.
Maybe she was only having a blah day; perhaps she did not realize the signal she sent me as she seemed to lose interest in my new found writer. I feel bad saying something as critical as this about her and the part about her personal life, but us students do not live in vacuums. And believe it or not, we pay attention and are influenced by the tastes, styles, attitudes, efforts, and reactions of our teachers. Some of us don't forget. Perhaps we do become unfairly critical. We may carry lessons and memories with us for a long time. Maybe forever, both the formal and in-between-the-lines messages.
That is the big point of writing such an essay/memoir: to show that we do become products of that which we are exposed to, what is attempted to be inculcated upon us. Linguistically, academically, socially, visually, scientifically, the teachers of subjects, in this case English, course through our thoughts and emotions for many years. It is the lifeblood of our souls that are being tampered with, touched, or lifted.
Some English teachers affect us more than others, some probably affect us subliminally and sub-consciously for the rest of our lives.
May we be so lucky to know what happened throughout our lives as far as who pushed what buttons, who pressed feelings and interests this way and that, why we end up doing and saying and writing and thinking what we do, sometimes as a result of these instructors.
Much of it has no bearing, assuredly, and much of it we can never decipher. But it might be worth digging up a little. If it be just a little insightful.
Words to ponder. People to reflect on. Memories to consider.
Teachers to learn from. Always.
